Re: OTish. Peak oil.

Oil isn't much of a problem rearding electricity generation, but on that
note we should not be burning gas for the same like it's going out of
fashion. The solution here is to stop buggering about and start building
some nukes like they should have started 20 years ago, except they were all
too wet.
Oil will be a big problem for cars and indutry though. And that problem is
not solved.
Cars - still the batteries. Motor and control technologies have been ready
for years (if in part high power motors and control electronics have been
well developed for trains so cars are easy). We just need a method to carry
around a dense store of electricity - which at least is being researched
constantly for mobile electronics - but at the moment the densest and most
convenient way to cary energy happens to be liquid fuels.
Saudi - wouldn't surprise me if they were lying to keep prices up - "oh no
we're running out". 2 years later: "oh look, we've found a bit more - but
only a bit, so it's going to cost you". Repeat for some decades...

Figures for oil reserve are not "oil in the ground", they are
dependent on the extraction method whose economics are dependent on
oil price.
High oil prices permit costly extractive methods to be used which in
turn increases the effective reserve and pushes back the "Peak Oil
Date". For example, gas & oil shale reserves in USA & Canada are both
enormous and profitable to extract at current prices. Likewise wells
such as North Sea that were expected to be defunct now are still
providing supply due to a high oil price offsetting the cost of
enhanced extraction techniques.
There is a high degree of speculation with oil, and I suspect
deliberate manipulation to make alternative extraction methods
economic. You would not be mining sands & shale at 12$ per barrel.
Conversely a puzzle is why would you build "The World" if supply were
known to remain low cost far into 2050?
A lot of smoke and mirrors, as others have said we should be
processing our coal and building nukes. Having to convert sterling
into dollars to import energy is not the brightest thing we could do,
digging energy out of the ground is a far more rational solution when
you are sitting on a warehouse of the stuff which you only need to pay
to extract.
There is too much vested interest in terms of disrupting existing
supply chains.

Correct. A LOT of S American and north American/canadian resources are
break-even at around $70 a barrel.
Saudis deliberately limit production rate to keep prices high: this
maximises the value of what they have left in the ground.
Even if they lose market share.

Yup. And in bloody stupid windpower.
I don't personally like coal..its dirty and dangerous and makes a LOT of
CO2. Nuclear far safer and less environmentally destructive.

There's at least 300 years of coal in the UK at 1980 consumption
levels.
There's little you can do with coal other than burn it for heat. Coal
should be used to generate electricity, gas should be piped to homes
for
home heating, oil should be used to make plastics. It's madness
burning
gas to make electricity when we already have a distribution system to
get its energy to the consumption point.
JGH

Coal can yield both gas and fuel oil, leaving smokeless coke. So it
pretty much covers all bases. Dirty fume output can now be treated as
a chemical source rather than released untouched, albeit at a price.
Peak oil is a hypothesis based on failing to understand the nature of
the figures. In short, exploration is expensive, so only so many years
is worth exploring for.
Anyone know anything about gas hydrate reserves?
NT

Not quite true.
We will never run out of oil, but two points the curve of oil extraction
are salient and meaningful.
1/. The point at which it gets so expensive its cheaper to use something
else. This is 'peak oil' where world production starts to FALL.
2/. The point at which it takes more energy to extract than it produces
when burnt. This is much later on, and marks the true end of oil as a
fuel. But not necessarily as a chemical feedstock for plastics etc.
The peak oil proposition si that we are now at the point where world
consumption and production of oil has, or is about to, peak.

try theoildrum.
Or whatever that site is called.
Very informed site on all matters petrochemical.

Exactly my mate's attitude during privatisation - he worked for CEGB.
"Coal and nuclear for base load, gas for rapid response to demand and
Dinorwig for system stabilisation".
Unfortunately, the idiot tories flooged it off priced deliberately so that
the then cheapness of gas made the whole thing look attractive for sale.
Isn't it funny that whilst Blair was happy to ignore screaming crowds of
protestors over Iraq2 and trample all over everyone who objected to his
draconian regime of new regulations, he couldn't use that pig headedness for
something useful and tell the anti-nuke and nimby lobbies to feck off, they
were getting 15 new nuclear power stations distributed around the grid like
it or not.
We'd have had them by now, or be very close.
Privatisation of electricity has been nearly as bad as the railways. The
CEGB reaserch centre closed down (I wonder who develops their technology
now?), I get charged £35 for a fuse pull, people are getting charged silly
money for new supplies and the southeast MV and LV networks have just been
sold to a Hong Kong company FFS.

Ditto railways.
Southeastern have hiked prices round here by >10% this year, taken *an
extra* 25 million PA in taxpayer subsidies and yet still manage to have paid
44 million over 3 years in dividends as well as obscene bonuses to
directors.
So there you go. As predicted, privatisation was a gigantic flop. Even the
excuse that it would allow the gov to wash its hands of managing anything is
crap - the DoT interferes with the railways constantly not to mention
Network Rail is now wholly state owned because the privatised effort fecked
up big time.
If you go up to the MD of Southeastern as I did a couple of weeks back and
give him an earful re 1st paragraph, all you get is: we have a duty to
shareholders, we only make 1% profit [my heart bleeds] and we're allowed to
put up the prices by the franchise [so stuff you].
That's why if you follow Twitter on #southeastern you will learn new swear
words every day - and discover a whole bunch of people are barraging MPs and
councillors with letters and emails. Dispatches is doing a programme soon on
the state of the railways - air time March sometime probably.

Right, it is the one I thought it might be. 35 quid is a fair charge for
that. It's not the work itself which costs the money, it's the getting
the man out there to do it - ie callout.
Since this is a DIY group, what are the options to DIY this? If the
seals are bust, how much do the leccy people complain?

I don't think it is - when they have the option to install an isolator,
which they refuse to. I took the precaution of adding exactly the isolator
they would if they did, into their meter cabinet. There was some "debate"
when the bloke came back to refit the fuse, but he saw my POV in the end.
I have the means to isolate my water at the road, my gas at the meter - if
EDF are too cheap to offer an isolator as standard, it's not my fault.

It depends.
If you have some manky old crap with paper/oil insulated cable, you would be
well advised not to touch it - there have been cases of:
1) Cutout falling off the wall when fuse pulled;
1a) Then bending the incoming cable where the paper has become dry and
brittle involving a large bang with the potntial to cause horrific burns.
2) The cutout casing breaking up leaving live parts.
If it's new ish (like less than 20 years old) you are probably fine as long
as the company don't have any recollection of having reinstalled the seals
recently - in which case you might get into trouble if they are sure you
broke then rather than slightly suspicios.

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